A week-end of 1040 fun

It’s not holiday time. It’s tax time! Last year I asked one of the professors who teaches Tax here, which computer program he uses to file his returns. He said “the simple one called ‘pencil and eraser.’” Me too.

But I’m still a week away and the temptation each day is to push this odious chore to another moment.
Today, for instance, I could not possibly work on taxes. I am distracted by the following email received from a reader:

Greetings from Montana.
Although my head is full of keeping calves alive and planting cottonwoods right now, I will be back in Madison next week.

What is more interesting than gathering the requisite papers for tax work? The above. I wish I were keeping calves alive and planting cottonwoods this week-end (btw, what are cottonwoods*? Futons?).

*name of store in High Point Plaza

It’s Easter week-end, isn’t it?

My family never did anything about Easter as I was growing up. There was no reason to make a holiday of it: in Poland, Easter was a supremely religious celebration (my family was not Catholic). I don’t remember there being bunnies or chicks or Easter bonnets – just crowds pouring out of church, and then, in the late post-dinner afternoon, crowds in parks, as families went for the weekly ‘promenade.’

But the painting of Easter eggs for Easter transcended the holiday itself. We learned early on how to get the egg out of the shell and preserve the shell itself. And we learned to love the designs that we repeatedly saw reproduced on eggs sold in craft shops.

I'm including a few photos here, perhaps to remind myself of their loveliness.

It’s final: a pyramid over a crate

I didn’t read this week’s NYT science article (here) until today. I once fancied myself as being mathematically-inclined (it seems, in retrospect, that I have fancied myself inclined in very many ways over the years…hmmmm..) and so I read the article with greater care than I normally would read a piece from under the “science” rubric.

It appears that one of the oldest problems of math has been conclusively solved (as demonstrated by the acceptance of the proof by a leading mathematics journal). No, don’t stop reading! You may want to know, even if you have no interest in math. The problem is all about the most efficient ways to pack oranges (originally stated as a problem of stacking cannonballs): the pyramid holds more than the crate. Why? The Times gives this simple layperson’s explanation: “(the pyramid) allows each layer of oranges to sit lower, in the hollows of the layer below, and take up less space than if the oranges sat directly on top of each other.”

The article explains how the computer-assisted proof initially raised eyebrows (checking issues arose). It is a fascinating story of how mathematics can no longer rely on the human brain to solve its remaining puzzles (but neither can it simply feed the problems to the computer, for understandable reasons). But I am still stuck on this very basic truth: pyramid over crate. So easy, so logical, but I would have never guessed.

Confession of a weary gardener

It’s not all fun and games out there in the mud. Nor is it all smiles in the blogger community in reaction to my Spring Updates. Two comments from yesterday are especially telling:

Reader number one wrote the following:

“I'm glad to see that you are not blogging about Spring and gardening today. Though I enjoy the pictures of the flowers, you were making me feel guilty because I have no interest whatsoever in doing yard work or getting my hands dirty.”

Conclusion number one: Spring Updates inspire guilt rather than pleasure.

Reader number two commented:

”Call me old fashioned, but I like to see grass as the dominant plant-life of a lawn. It seems that if you sprinkle turkey droppings and only turkey droppings to sustain it, you’re likely to have weeds, weeds and more weeds. In fact I distinctly remember seeing weeds last year in your front yard.”

I remember an exchange that I had with someone about lawns a few years back. When I recounted to this person that I had just spent a morning picking out the particularly noxious spreading weeds, she had said “in my yard, if it’s green it stays.”

Conclusion number two: people feel strongly about lawn care (or lack thereof).

I am all for balance, so I promise, Spring Updates will appear at intervals so great that you wont even remember when you last saw one. As for weeds – I will continue to dig by hand. For those used to greener pastures – I’m sorry, but I can’t even stand to take walks through the neighborhood when the Chemlawn truck has passed through and left its dirty trail. The stench takes all the pleasure out of walking. In my mind, this is one of the most avoidable chemical addictions that suburbanites continue to support. I can understand smoking better than I can understand spraying your yard repeatedly so that it will look like Astroturf.

To buy or not to buy?

Suppose your income was $200 a month and you had a family to support (including aging grandparents and parents who had no where else to go). Suppose life was tough, entertainment options were few, winter nights were long. Suppose you were used to buying things “under the counter” as it were, and you lived in a country where the word “copyright law” has not been in existence for the past 70 years.

Alright, supposing all the above, would a legitimately produced CD, priced at $10, or DVD priced at $20 cause you to turn away from the market of pirated copies, selling at $4 each? Showing titles that are more recent than what you can legitimately have access to? And appearing with ready translations into the language of your choice? You would do that? ARE YOU SURE??

The Times reports (here) that the American Film Industry is now trying to fight piracy in Russia by lowering prices of DVDs (cutting them back to $10 -$15). Still, it seems futile. I cannot imagine a person who earns that little spending so much just to feed the American Film Industry its rightful share of profit. I’m not saying that this is right, I am simply dubious that the Film Industry will make even an infinitesimal dent in piracy with this move.

Perennial quest to understand life around me

Early on in the blogger game, I puzzled over an intriguing bumper sticker (on Bukowski). That speculation proved to be the single most provocative thing I ever wrote here – it inspired pronouncements of anger, admiration, boredom, impatience, and confusion from all corners of the world. It was riveting to be in the midst of such controversy.

This time my walk through a parking lot made me spot yet another bumper sticker that I found puzzling. I do NOT anticipate a slew of emails over this one, though I must say, I am at wit’s end as to the meaning or purpose of the following sign:

“Visualize whirled peas”

I have two hints:
1. the person is not announcing anything of a politically conservative tenor since all other bumper stickers on this car were rather left-leaning.
2. a search on the Net produced the picture I've included here. But does this really help us any? I'm confused.

UPDATE: A reader unscrambled this one within seconds: World peace. Whirled Peas. Ah. It had nothing to do with sustainable agriculture after all.

Trying to make the best of "life in the suburbs," part 2

In a February post, I rhapsodized about the household across the street and their creative genius in bringing out (on a drab winter day) a stockpile of pink flamingos, to be arranged haphazardly in the snow by the children who live there.

Yesterday the entire family was hanging out in the front yard (I love this about them; only two households on the entire long block of some 30 houses, actually use their front yard for hanging out purposes) and so I finally quit being the voyeur and went over to introduce myself (they are fairly new arrivals to our neighborhood).

After this first encounter, I am convinced that they are indeed great people, creative, fun, terrific in all respects. But the flamingos? Alack, alas, these are not their birds. They do not have a single pink flamingo. Some service brought them around for a week, to celebrate the birthday of the woman living there.

Still, I was cheered to see buckets of colorful chalk by the garage. Maybe now that we’ve officially met, I can help paint dragons and monsters and butterflies on the street with them. At the very least, I can again watch the color unforld.

Accounted for

Today, Agence France-Presse announced that a plane wreck has been discovered off the coast of France. The plane has been identified as belonging to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. This is certainly not a recent crash: Saint-Exupéry disappeared 60 years ago and although it was speculated that the plane he flew went down, the accident was never confirmed.

‘The Little Prince,’ written by Saint-Exupéry, was first published in 1943. The Times reports that it has since been translated into more than 100 languages and is third on the all-time-anywhere best seller list, after the Bible and Marx’s Das Kapital.

Das Kapital is second on the list of best sellers? Can you list ten people you know who have read Das Kapital? (I can be included on your list as it was required reading for me at the U of Warsaw; but then, I was an econometrics major and this was Poland in the 60-70s!) I would think that if you were going to be Marx obsessed you’d pick up the Communist Manifesto, not Das Kapital.

As for ‘The Little Prince’ – well, for me, too, it was a truly magical little book, but I don’t know why it uniformly inspires such feelings of rapture. It is quite a simple story. One might say that it is sort of the opposite of Das Kapital in that way. Are the same people reading both??? After the eyestrain of paging through Marx, ‘The Little Prince’ may well offer the perfect antidote.

‘The Little Prince’ is one of those books that makes you think that surely there is a subtext, a Great Meaning of some sort. It’s not hard to imagine a Great Meaning hidden in simple statements about our planet –as seen from the eyes of an interstellar traveler. Now that I’m remembering it, I can see how easy it is to get lost in the imagination of that storyteller. And the illustrations – well, after reading the Bible and Das Kapital, one would be so GRATEFUL for a book with illustrations. Gentle words, soothing pictures, nice text, possibly with Great Meaning, but probably not. Yeah, a nice relaxing moment, lyrical, calming to your senses, allowing you to forget about the deeply troubled world described in the “top two” best selling texts.

Wake up! It doesn’t get much loftier than this!

If this wasn’t a day that topped all spring days, I don’t know what could possibly qualify: partly (mostly) sunny, temperatures in the upper sixties, no chilly undertow, truly great walking weather!

It was also a perfect day to revisit the UW Arboretum. When I am there, I think I should devote my life to collecting seed samples and to the creation of this place of great natural beauty. It evokes a feeling of community and partnership. True, in some places you can hear the Beltline traffic and the noises of nearby construction. But in some spots it's just the echo of your walking shoes among the pines and birches. And, on the hill of orchard trees, you could just run and run and test your endurance and no one will care or even notice. Next time.

News doesn’t just hit you in the face

..you have to go out and look for it. This week’s Newsweek tells of a writer who went right out into NY’s alleys in the interest of searching out stories about rats.

Robert Sullivan observed rats for a year and then wrote a book about it (see comment on it here). Not bad material, I should think. There are enough rat stories out there to keep us intrigued for a while. I do side with the Newsweek interviewer who asks “why do people hate rats and not squirrels?” Why indeed? Each is a rodent, yet we teach our children how to feed the latter and fear the former.

The author of the rat book was also asked to comment on how rats and people may be similar. Sullivan replies:

"I observe these rats, and they come out of their hole, they go to the same place each day to feed and then they go back to their hole for bed. Then I turn around and look at Wall Street, and I see all of these people coming out of holes in the ground, going to breakfast, going into their buildings and then going home. Same thing."

No kidding.

[sketch: from On-line Pravda]

Spring Update

A kind reader, wishing to feed my blogger-vanity, asks for a Spring Update. I think he must simply like to start off the work day with a transfixed gaze at something colorful and benign. This fits the bill.


In fact, I do like writing about my plants. To me, plant-care is a very “other-centered” activity. I spend far more time working with my borders out front (even though the light is less consistent, the planting space is on a slope, and the roots of nearby trees make digging deep trenches virtually impossible), than on the ones out back, which sort of thrive on sheer neglect.

Today I am happy to see the beginnings of what I call my “woodland spring garden.” This is a bit of a misnomer because the woodiness consists of only one very large birch tree. But it provides ample spring light now when the branches are leafless, morphing into dappled light when the birch leaves emerge, and eventually emerging as almost complete summer shade for the dry ground below. In the spring, the light is perfectly in place to grow the yellow and blue flowers that are a Monet-like statement about the loveliness of this color combination.

And so, of course, there are the daffodils. Scattered between ground cover are forget-me-nots, golden yellow globe flowers and the tiny blue bells of the hyacinth. In odd spots I have the very gentle green beginnings of ferns (they’ll grow monstrously big by July and then collapse for want of moisture by August –the birch roots take too much of the water to sustain this garden for long), and toward the end of spring, the lily-of-the-valley and the candle wildflower will signal the end of pale yellow and blue, and the beginning of a summer infusion of stronger greens and contrasting whites.

A reminder, nothing is blooming yet, but I think here, in this garden, we’re talking about just a week, not more, before we begin to see a display of color.

“I’m a creation, I’m a gifted improviser”

These are the words spoken by Tom Ripley in the just-released for the DVD market movie, “Ripley’s Game.”

After reading the review of ‘Ripley’s Game’ in the Sunday Times, it was obvious that it woul only be a matter of days before the DVD would find its way to this household. Some phrases from the review especially stood out: “Perhaps the most exquisitely sardonic thriller to go straight to DVD…” Or, about the lead actor’s role: “A supercilious reptile dripping with venom, he materializes, black beret just so, in the splendidly apt form of John Malkovich…(portraying the) screen incarnation of the enigmatic antihero.”

The film’s premiere was at the Venice International Film Festival in 2002 (“to thunderous applause” writes the Times), but subsequently it appeared in the US only three times (in NY, to sell-out audiences). Apparently there was disagreement about the way the film was to be released, resulting, in the end, in no release at all.

You could watch this movie for Malkovich’s depiction of Ripley alone. Or, for the splendid European cinematography. Or as an example of Liliana Cavani’s directing talents. Or you could watch it for its entirety – a superbly balanced story, a character study, an eerie portrayal of a man without a conscience. Yes, yes, there are nit-picky points that can be made – why this, why that, how is that this family is so wealthy, do we really need this subtext, etc. But nit-picking belongs to paid movie reviewers. For those of us seeking a good movie viewing experience, this one is well within that orbit.

Russell Smith (who co-produced the film along with Malkovich) talks about the irony of having a small gem of a movie to release. He tells the Times: “Complex, interesting films have become difficult to market, junk easy to market, and at the end of the year everyone scratches their head and wonders why they cannot come up with a 10-best list.” I’m not sure if he’s suggesting that his film should have –would have—been on that list. No matter, ‘Ripley’s Game’ is indeed a near-perfect thriller, worth every penny of the $4 rental fee.

The news that’s more than fit to print

This year’s Pulitzer Prize winners (announced today) are, as I suppose is typically the case, from a number of better and lesser known papers. I am curious about the stories, in the same way that one becomes curious about movies that win Oscars, so I google a number of them and spend a fascinating half-hour reading articles that are not only well written but have such breadth and vision (on such topics as the medically dismissed condition of aortic aneurysms to the examination of death and injury among American workers) that it makes your daily CNN.com story seem like a first grader’s chapter from a story book. (Though a very useful chapter. For instance, for the Pulitzer Prize story, look here.)

The Pulitzer for political cartoons was awarded to Matt Davies. My googling brought up wonderful examples of Davies work, among them, the above.

A steady dose of Nina

I was nineteen, coming from Poland to work as an au paire in the States, reading the NYT for the first time in my life on a regular basis (one might say I had to: the knife that buttered my bread was the NYT) when I was told of the Ninas in Hirschfeld’s drawings. But it wasn’t until much later that I learned that the number next to the artist’s name at the bottom gave you the Nina count for a given illustration.

Today the Times has a short little story about the Nina phenomenon in Hirschfeld’s work (here).

It’s odd what we sometimes get ourselves into. Hirschfeld had originally placed the name in a picture in recognition of the birth of his daughter. Eventually he wanted to stop the practice (hey, was Nina consulted on this?) but the public was outraged and so he was ‘forced’ to continue.

Is there comfort in this ritualistic search for a Nina? I always looked for the Ninas, but you’d think that I would be the one person who had an excuse to do this on a regular basis. Or, is the act of Nina-searching a dumb-person’s version of doing the NYT’s crossword puzzle? Or is it some mystical associations that we have with the name, the state of the world, art, death and all living things? Oh, but of course.

The greatest asset in your house may very well be your chair

After reading yesterday’s WashPost article on the merits (or lack thereof) of renting movies online, I decided that there is virtually no reason to ever get up and move your feet again. A friend recently discovered the joys of even ordering groceries online. She has good reasons to do this, but in time, others will buy into these services as well, even if they haven’t her movement limitations.

We talk through our computers, we acquire things, we send greetings – basically we do all that a cave person once had to venture out into the world for. We put ourselves right back into our caves, the boulders are rolling down the mountain and closing off entrances and exits, shutting out air and light, and we’re happy as anything with our great sophistication and brilliant mastery of life. To me, sometimes we seem dumber than the (computer-illiterate) apes who came before us.

And now come the divorces…

A WashPost article this morning describes a gay union between two men, entered into back in the 70s, dissolved several years later.

The article is a good reminder of the obvious: that the legal aspects of marriage are most salient at the time of break-up, not during the marriage itself. If you ask someone what legal protections they are seeking in marriage, maybe they’ll mention health insurance and hospital visits. Effectively, for most couples, the law does not permeate daily married life.

But the law is the great regulator of dissolution. It is no surprise that in my Family Law class we spend 25% of the semester on marriage and 75% on dissolution and non-marriage, and even then I think I am too generous toward marriage.

Couples (gay or straight) who break up without the legal protection of divorce proceedings (because they never married) have very real problems, ones that are hardly considered at the time of moving in together. Property, custody of children, pension rights, support benefits – none of these can have the oversight of family court (flawed as that oversight may be) if there isn’t a marriage. In fact, even in Wisconsin – a state whose highest court wrote the law on third party rights to visits with children –it’s very difficult to gain access to your partner’s children unless you can demonstrate (a legal certificate sure would help here) that you were indeed acting in a parent-like relationship toward the child.

Perhaps, then, in this great discussion of gay marriages we should be really concentrating on gay divorces. Maybe I could suggest to GWB that he should amend the proposed constitutional amendment so that it realistically states what it is we are asking the constitution to do: “marriage may only be entered into and dissolved if it is between a man and a woman.” Phrased this way, maybe it would wake opponents to gay marriage up to the absurdity of this kind of legal limitation: the vast majority of couples who are splitting up needs the protection of the law – most can’t get to a fair result without it. The point is so obvious, yet so negelcted (by those on both sides of the issue) in current discussions of the merits of gay legal unions.

Everyone’s gone to the moon

Walking through a Westside neighborhood today I imagined how it might look to a Martian landing on any of the front lawns (now that we know there was once water on Mars it is easier to imagine that there are also little Martians traveling around the universe and beyond in their little oblong space ships). They’d see a street resembling a ghost town. Not a sign of life. Silence from within. If I were that Martian, upon witnessing such silence and emptiness I’d hightail it out of here. Surely some chemical toxins have either wiped out 100% of the population or at the very least forced everyone indoors? For safety’s sake, I’d close the door to my spaceship and flee!.

Of course, there are no toxins, there was no chemical spill, no bombs exploded wiping out the population. It was just a gorgeously bright and sunny Sunday in Spring and everyone was locked indoors, creating an outdoor sense of desolate emptiness and betrayal. What Martian would want to pause and be part of that? Sometimes I just hate the suburbs.


P.S. I do want to exempt one tiny portion of my block from this: where the flamingos once somersaulted in the winter (see February post), there are now plastic chairs, wheelbarrows and toys. The family across the street brings life right onto the front lawn and their magnetic draw attracts others. Our block is thus spared the ghost-town imagery. As I worked clearing the plant beds of winter debris out front today, I felt that a Martian would feel okay on our block.

The Spring anti-update

Realty sets in as I watch the following plants proliferate at an alarming pace: dandelions, violets, and defiant lamium (which took over an entire area prepped for a new flower border and now will not leave).

I feel noble and virtuous with my resistance to chemicals in the yard. I fertilize with organic turkey droppings – how cool is that –and I pull out (no exaggeration here) hundreds of dandelions by hand, one by one, so that they don’t completely control the yard. But lamium has stumped me. Thus I get a deep thrill when I come across a container of Round Up weed killer at Menard’s. I study the toxic ingredients with something verging on lust and I tell myself that there'll be one more year of waging war against the lamium and after that I’ll cave in: late at night, when no one is watching, I’ll point and spray and watch the noxious foam do its dirty work, seeping into the leaves of each and every one of these little bastards.

As for the violets: never has something that looks so pretty in June turned into such a menace for all the months after. I'll cut off the flowers and throw them in salads and basically resign myself to their spreading habit. Taste and beauty sometimes win over orderliness.

So are we down to four now?

The NYT today provides an assessment of the four most likely Kerry running mates: Edwards (+charisma, but he wont even deliver NCarolina), Gebhardt (+everyone likes Gebhardt, but he’s old news), Vilsack (+swing state Midwesterner, but no foreign policy credentials), Richardson (+ swing state and foreign policy on his side, but has never run for office before).

Of course, those who have seen the spiciness of the primaries wither and become an endless dusty road with no sign of anything more titillating than Kerry’s shoulder surgery may still be holding out hope for McCain. So what that he doesn’t want the job, doesn’t want to cross party lines, doesn’t want to be anyone’s running mate? It is said that if he got on board it would be a sure win for Kerry. You’d think that would be tough to pass up if you were as dis-enamored with GWB as McCain is.

Spring Ahead

Had I remembered that clocks leap forward today, I would not have turned off the computer at 1:30 (meaning 2:30) last night, especially since a visitor is stopping by in an hour and so an early wake-up was essential.


All this is rather trivial, but I did want to note that waking up has not been a problem recently because of the unfortunate bird issue. I don’t mean “birds singing” either. Birds have been flying into our windows at an alarming rate this year. There have always been a few confused souls in the past who have done this. Usually the birds fall to the ground in a state of shock and if I am around, I will either keep an eye on them or move them, just to make sure the vicious neighborhood cats don’t get to them before the little guys get over their shock and can fly again.

But there have been so many lately that I wonder if it isn’t like the “frogs stopped singing in the Amazon” phenomenon (i.e. a sign of disastrous environmental changes that have caused a weakened species). So, I’m up, listening for the next thud and wondering whether I should paint temporary orange stripes on the windows, at least until the bird population gets its seasonal strength again.

Walking

Today, the April breezes and skies and trees were so stirring that I took no fewer than TWO long walks, though the first one was better than the second for reasons (among others) of increased wind velocity and decreased interest in the enterprise the second time around. But I did want to note that walking in Madison, especially during three out of the four seasons, is just about the best thing you can do here. I mean, people love the lakes and I admit that if your life is all about sailing and ice-fishing, you’re going to be magnetically drawn to these great bodies of water.

If, on the other hand, your only lake associations are either with 1. the Union Terrace on a late summer afternoon, 2. the view from your office, if you’re lucky, 3. the unfortunate death of Otis Redding, or 4. the very real possibility of increased mosquito activity, then you have to look elsewhere for outdoor diversion. Forgetting about State Street (which has greater commercial and people-watching value than outdoor-amusement ), there are still any number of non-mosquitoed walking places, including bike paths, interesting neighborhoods, and, of course, places like conservation parks, or the Arboretum.

When I am reminded that this month marks the beginning of all these trekking possibilities, I positively soar with energy and joy.

[photo: Owen Woods]

A Blockbuster in hell

I hate being wasteful –spending money on things that prove to be completely worthless, too horribly bad for even the garbage can.

Last month I bought a DVD, thinking it would rest easily on the shelf of “DVDs that are fun to watch when you want to do the ironing or pay the bills and don’t want to exert yourself much but wouldn’t mind a sweet moment with the silver screen or at least a good laugh.” That shelf has a number of movies on it that I consider completely entertaining – Possesion, Chariots of Fire, Tortilla Soup, Moonstruck – all fun stuff, nothing too taxing, a pick-me-up-when-I-am not-too-chipper-kind of shelf. To this I thought I’d add “Intolerable Cruelty.” Why? Because anything with Catherine Zeta-Jones was bound to be easily digestible and not terribly challenging in the cerebral way, and although it only had a “US Weekly” recommendation on the back (“Huge Laughs!” it reads, which I now think has hidden subversive meanings, sort of an inside joke among reviewers: “what a HUGE LAUGH it is that some people will actually spend more than a quarter to see this!”), I though it would be okay.

It was not okay. In fact, I have played it several times just to demonstrate to various people passing through this house how BAD a movie can be, because no one quite believes my blasphemous comments uttered in a not altogether sane manner about it.

So what do I do now that I wasted what suddenly seems like huge sums of money on this worthless piece of trash? I can’t toss it, but I also can’t possibly display it – I can’t stand to even look at it, let alone be reminded that I actually brought it into the house. What now?

There ought to be a special delivery service collecting movies of this nature for rental in hell. This particular film could make life miserable for any number of people who need to be tortured in a systematic and continuous way. Consider it a charitable contribution, just from me.

But does he care about you and me?

A Washington Post poll shows a decline in people’s perceptions about how compassionate GWB really is. Here’s one set of responses:

Bush has frequently described himself as a 'compassionate conservative.' Do you think Bush has -- or has not -- governed in a way that is compassionate?

Has 49% (now) 64% (2/2/2003)
Has not 45% (now) 34% (2/2/2003)
No opinion 5% (now) 2% (2/2/2003)

I’ve never fully understood what the term “compassionate conservative” really means, and what its opposite may be (“spitefully conservative?” “indifferent-to-the-lot-of-others conservative?”) and who would subscribe to that opposite given that it’s bound to then have pejorative meanings or associations.

But it’s interesting to wonder what exactly happened in the last year that would cause the change in public opinion. People sometimes ascribe great meaning to smaller things and not enough meaning to big ticket items, so it remains a mystery why numbers on compassion where as high as they were a year ago (and, conversely, why they dropped).

The most touching story…

…appears in the NYT today (here). It is about an old (perhaps 84 yrs?) Kenyan man who took advantage of the government’s decision to make elementary education free and enrolled in first grade (he had never before gone to school and could not read, write, or count). If you passed over the article, do at least read these snippets for a real feel-good start to the day:

On the first day of school, he put on some gray knee socks and blue trousers that he had cut off above the knee to resemble the short pants worn by schoolchildren all over the country. With his school uniform in place, he limped his way from his mud hut to the office of the headmistress, Jane Obinchu.

She thought Mr. Maruge was joking when he said he was there to enroll in the first grade. But Mr. Maruge was insistent, and Mrs. Obinchu decided to give him a chance - a spot right up front where he could hear her.

The other students, most of them 78 years younger than Mr. Maruge, were amused at first by the old man's presence. But over time they grew used to having a "Mzee," the Swahili honorific given to elders, as a classmate.

After all, Mr. Maruge practiced writing the A B C's just as they did. He worked on basic math problems right alongside them. Slowly, the entire class, Mr. Maruge included, began to learn to read.

Kenyan officials were stunned that Mr. Maruge and others well beyond school age had sought to take advantage of free primary education. "We never knew that such people would come," said S. K. Karaba, senior deputy director in the Department of Education. "They still want to be taught. There is an urge."….

At Kapkenduiywa Primary, Mr. Maruge is now a fixture. He is frequently the first student to arrive in the morning, sometimes an hour early. During the school day, he plays the role of both student and teacher. He feels free to give advice to his classmates, reminding them frequently to study hard and listen to their parents.

When the school day is over, Mr. Maruge walks back to the home he shares with his sister. He tends his small herd of sheep and his goats and chickens. Later, he pulls out his books to study a bit before dinner. He is the only student at the school who asks his teacher for homework.

The story does remind me of my grandmother who, though basically literate (in the way that you would be if you completed only three years of schooling), had never read a book in her life until she was about 70. From then on, she read with a vengeance, going straight to the Polish classics that we’d bring to the village from the Warsaw library. She worked her way slowly, very slowly through the great epics and tragedies belonging to the past. She never talked about what she read, but I used to like to watch her, sitting at the kitchen table, turning the pages slowly, following each line, sometimes mouthing the words. It was so quiet in the village (no paved roads, no traffic, just one store a mile away). During the years that she lived there alone, books must have literally kept her sane against all that quiet.
[photo credits: "Kenyan first grader" is from the NYT, countryside around my grandmother's village is from Ekoland.pl]

No photos or art will accompany this post

Did anyone catch the Cap Times review of the 3-day show opening this week-end at the Barrymore? It’s titled ‘Puppetry,’ and it is about, about… an art form of sorts, depicted with humor and, I should think, great physical skill. Certain body parts of two actors are formed into, among other things, a pelican, a hamburger, the Loch Ness monster and the Eiffel Tower.

How original and apparently exceptionally funny and asexual. Still, tickets are at $35. I’ll wait for reports from others. Write me if you venture out to see it.

How can you keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree..

Ollie, my canine, was well trained (emphasis on ‘was’). I believe I have bragged ad nauseam about his independent quick run in the unfenced yard each day, all on a brief verbal command from me.

Today, Ollie went out as usual as I waited, bored, inside. And waited. And waited. Ollie had obviously flown the coop. Spring had gone to his head, poor guy, and he was off to see the world. For the first time in his four and a half years of life, he experienced FREEDOM! Oh, he was shy enough to come back when I went out on the street, sat down (how odd-seeming was that?) and stretched out my arms (he can never resist the lap and arms). But I’m not fooled. He’s seen bigger oceans and grassier fields now. He’ll fly again. Who wouldn’t?

No, no, no, of course not!

A reader (referring to blog posts below) asked today how is it that I got all my plants to bloom this early in the season. This reader, obviously an urban and urbane fellow, assumed that the photos in my “Spring Update” series depicted flowers that were now in their best form in my yard. He was exceedingly in awe of my horticultural skills since he’d only seen crocuses in other Madison yards.

It is painful to stick a pin in the balloon that stands for one’s over-inflated-worth-in-the-eyes-of-another, but I fear I must: no, my flowers are not yet in bloom. Far from it, no such luck, couldn’t be, no way. April, that most wonderful, revitalizing month, just started YESTERDAY! The plants identified below have all emerged from the ground, but the photos simply portend showy summer weeks ahead. We’re not there yet. As I sit here typing in my wooly socks and big burly oversized sweater I am reminded, brilliant sunshine today notwithstanding, we’re not there yet.

Spring Update

I apologize – these updates are now loading here fast and furious, but my plants are rapidly breaking ground and it is a joyous experience, one that deserves notation. Today, it’s all about daylilies. There are hemerocallis nuts out there – people who study, breed and cultivate the hundreds of varieties of this genus of plant. I’m not quite there, but I am charmed by daylily designs and colors. Plus it remains one of nature’s most prolific flowers—a regular fertile myrtle: a bud opens each morning, is spent by the end of the day, a new one opens the next day, and so on. It is a remarkable thing to observe.

I can’t find all the varieties I have in the front and back of the house, but they include some of the ones pictured here.

Maybe I should reconsider spectator sports

Yesterday, in our discussion of custody and physical placement (in the Family Law class) I gave examples of cases I had worked on that had, in my opinion, an incorrect result despite the fact that a text-book reading of the fact patterns would have lead you to predict a decent outcome. I had wondered if the students could really understand this peculiarity about family law – it can be unpredictable because so many factors can confound and confuse the proceedings. I was gratified, therefore, to get the following email from a reader this morning. She was reflecting on the class discussion and thought of it in this way:

Here's a basketball metaphor I think applies here: anybody can learn to dribble the ball down the court to the basket, and make a stylistically brilliant shot from different points on the perimeter, with enough practice and diligence, if you're playing alone with no other players. However, in the real game, even just a one-on-one, there is another person always covering you, trying to stick their hand into your dribble and get the ball, and block where you can move on the court, block your shot once it leaves your hands, etc., which severely limits what parts of your game you can play depending on the opponent. Like in family or custody law: any book could summarize how the custody decisions are made on paper, or you could read the statute and think that's easy enough, but your real-world explanations today were kind of like the defense checking the ball handler.

I’m impressed. Sports metaphors typically elude me (is that ever obvious – see posts below), but this one hit home. This semester I have a renewed respect for the playing field, and an exponentially growing admiration for the students in my classes.

Suspicious minds

My friends and readers have let me down. One after another, they question the authenticity of blog posts today JUST BECAUSE IT’S APRIL 1st! The last message on this was the final straw. My reader writes:

“Now I'm just trying to figure out if the Smigus Dyngus post is for real, or an April Fools post in itself. The photo, with realistic looking costume, has me being less suspicious, but one never knows... Very mysterious you can be!!”

Now really, would I make up something like that? Check out the site here (scroll down to the bottom for an analysis of Smigus Dyngus). Or, if you aren’t the checker type, let me quote the relevant passage for you:

Smigus-dyngus, czyli pomyślność na mokro: Oblewanie się nawzajem wodą w poniedziałek wielkanocny (nazywany z tej okazji Świętym Lejkiem) to również zwyczaj stary i wywodzący się najprawdopodobniej z obrzędów związanych z wiarą w dobroczynne właściwości wody. Był przy tym i jest doskonalą zabawą dla całej rodziny, a także okazją dla psotników, by płatać figle... w zgodzie z ludową tradycją. Polewano się różnie, na dworach paroma kropelkami wody perfumowanej, na wsiach wiadrami i konewkami. Niejedna panna została nawet wepchnięta do rzeki czy koryta z wodą.

Is says it right there, doesn’t it?

The essence of fox

A reader asks where I am able to procure 100% fox urine (see Spring Update posts below). Well, naturally, I don’t chase down the animals myself with jar in hand. But someone does, and what a job that must be! I suppose I could also find it on the Net, but for me, it’s just as easy to locate it in select stores that sell farming or gardening essentials. And btw, it seems not to “spoil:” if you buy too much to use in one season, let me assure you, the stuff is even more foul smelling the next year.

The fools of April

A reader and a friend sent me the following email message late last night:

“It is now April Fool's day. meaning I refuse to talk to you for the next 22 hours (until the day is over, your time). what will happen this year? I don't know, but I know it will be something, and I know I'll fall for it, whatever it is, so see you April 2.”

That’s harsh! I’ll have you know that this year, I am much more into Smigus Dyngus – a traditional Polish celebration that falls on Easter Monday. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SMIGUS DYNGUS IS???? Wait ‘til Monday, will you ever be surprised!!

[For those far away, and therefore not within a bucket’s reach that day, let me explain: traditionally, on Smigus Dyngus, boys drenched girls with squirt guns, buckets of water, anything that caused great wetness. The thought was that the more a girl was sprayed with water, the higher were her chances of getting married—though I see some pagan ritual elements here, as in cleansing the body and soul, etc... The holiday is observed especially by young people: boys will literally wait out on the road, near markets, in village squares and as soon as a girl would pass – she’d get the bucket. Older men, on the other hand, sprayed their wives with cologne water, though I’m not sure what the purpose of that was – unless he secretly wanted her to leave and marry someone else, a.s.a.p.!? The revenge comes the next day: the girls dump water on guys on Tuesday. In my time, we were way too impatient and so everyone, male and female, dumped water on each other, all Monday long.]

A lesson from the past: my lack of talent may be a virtue

A guest lecturer from Taiwan came to my class yesterday to address issues of Family Law in the context of changing norms and values. His own view was that Taiwan had rushed to embrace Western standards too fast and without enough discussion of what was sacrificed along the way. Individual rights are all fine and well, but the relinquishment of family-centered values comes at a very personal cost to the many people who once had a rich network of family and now feel themselves to be isolated.

The Taiwanese professor gave two examples of old Chinese proverbs that no longer have the force they once did, and I must say, even though I do not live in Taiwan, I am intrigued by them and think they could have interesting applications even on this side of the ocean. Consider each one:

1. “For a woman to be without talent is a virtue.” Sure, I know that sounds harsh, but think how much pressure would be off our shoulders if this was honored today. Awards would be meted out for mediocrity and lack of accomplishment. Working long hours to perfect something would be pointless and indeed, may cause you to appear virtue-less.

2. “Marry a chicken, follow a chicken, marry a dog, follow a dog.” This one, too, is superb! You want marriage? Great – here it is: you got yourself a dog. Now are you happy?? Much could be learned from these words.

One of the most telling moments, however, came at the beginning of class. As students were trickling into the room, I handed them outlines of the paper to be presented by the visiting scholar. He watched in fascination, then asked: “Do you always hand out papers like that to students?” I hesitated, wondering if I had committed some International Gaffe of Great Magnitude and Consequence. He explained: “You are the respected one here, no? Why don’t you have THEM come and pick up the paper themselves?” It had never even occurred to me that I had just put myself down, meeting the students at their own low-status level rather than asking them for proper respect. No wonder they throw spitballs in class and play spider solitaire on their computers. Resolved: today, they come to ME to pick up the statute that I am now copying for them (wait: why am I even making copies for them??).

Liking the news again

Missing UW student found, minimum wage bill passes in Madison (one of just a handful of cities in the country now with a minimum wage that’s higher than the federal level), can we please just continue with the roll of good news?

Spring Update

The weather leaves much to be desired, BUT the white campanula is really shooting up, and the geranium is forming a thick mat. The veronica leaves are also quite large, and the dianthus is getting ready for the rabbit assault (their favorite).

The scientific revolution

A finding that is worth sitting up for: according to a UC San Diego study (published in Psychological Science), people pick pure-bread dogs that resemble them. I don’t really go for knocking studies that affirm the obvious. I’m surrounded by social scientists and have come to appreciate that there’s a big step from positing an “obvious” conclusion at a cocktail party (do people still go to cocktail parties?) to documenting it and drawing wider implications from it.

Still, this one seems so very basic that it, at the very least, does not deserve to be included in CNN.com’s top stories (here) for the morning.

On the other hand, it made ME click and read, just in case there was something to be learned from my own choice of an American Water Spaniel for a pet. The terribly frustrating thing about the cited study is that it seems not to specify (at least in the CNN synopsis of it) the criteria used for matching owners with their pets. It appears that different judges used different criteria, which, to me, is perhaps the most revealing aspect of the study: that you can use different criteria and arrive at the same place (similarly, when we admit students to law school, we use our own individually crafted set of markers, yet we wind up choosing pretty much the same students).

In dog selection, the conclusions presented are rather basic: Frenchies for trendy people, collies for gregarious folks.

They don’t say anything about American Water Spaniels, and I don’t think it would have application to my “selection process” anyway. I picked this particular dog because I was riding the bus from the Milwaukee airport and noticed this peculiar sight: a gorgeous, rather large animal, making his way up to the lap of its owner. I asked if he was feeling stressed after the plane ride. The owner said no, not especially, he just sort of fancied himself as lap dog – all 45 pounds of him. Ollie, our rather shy animal and offspring of this dog has the same (must therefore be genetic?) habit. If you sit down, he’ll make every effort to get into your lap. Yet his appearance is such that you’d think he’d be the perfect hunting companion to Dick Cheney. An incongruous mixture of traits. Does this say something about my predisposition?

[Btw, the American Water Spaniel also happens to be the state dog of Wisconsin, though absolutely NO ONE living here knows this, so I doubt it would steer a selection process.]

Students are so helpful

A few weeks ago, I wrote here that a concerned, well-meaning student come up after class to tell me that calling something a “slam dunker” violated every athletic principle known to man, woman, or child. Gratefully, I made a note that henceforth it shall be simply a “slam dunk.”

A reader then informed me that he had problems with my blog because I alluded there to being dense about slam dunks due to my limited knowledge of the baseball field. He told me that it is not the habit for athletes to achieve slam dunks in baseball.

Today, the same concerned “slam dunk” student told me that I might expand my sports education even further: rather than mentioning the “hometown” advantage of filing a court petition where you reside, I might try incorporating such terms as “homecourt” or “homefield,” even though he assured me that the athletes in the class would be comfortable if I decided to stay with “hometowning.”

Oh, I think I can spot a set-up here: I’ll bravely throw out “homecourt” next time, and mention playing tennis, even though I should be back in basketball land. And what’s “homefield?” Is that baseball or have we now switched to football? Or maybe it’s hockey? So many mistakes to be made with using this terminology… so many…

Good will and cheer

This is one of those days where I had reason to cross the mile-long State Street that links our campus with the State Capitol (and the court buildings). I was going to attend a law firm baby shower for a former student, an event that brought forth great feelings of nostalgia as no fewer than three of the firm’s six attorneys are former students of mine, and I’ve worked on family law cases in the past with all but one of the partners.
Half way up State Street it struck me that my baby gift would benefit greatly from a little rubber duckie stuck to the outside and so I went into a soap store (the Soap Opera, pictured here) to purchase one. This is the way Madison works: one favor leads to another and before you know it you’re all over-favoring each other until there are no more favors to bestow. I paid $1.50 for my duckie; the sales clerk loved the duckie-on-top-of-box idea and offered to add ribbon for effect (the store has always been keen on elaborate ribbonning of gifts); of course that meant that I had time to browse and pick up a number of astronomically expensive soaps –gift ideas for imminent occasions requiring little things of this nature; it was determined then that I was also deserving of many free samples, including one that I thought would actually best be purchased, in large quantities.

A cynic may comment that I was a sitting duckie myself: a target for salesclerk largess that would inevitably lead me to deplete my bank account in that store. But that cynic would be wrong. True, I left with a beautifully ribbonned-duckie-adorned box plus many other items, with the final bill reaching outrageously high levels if you think of it as a duckie bill, but on the other hand, the bill was not so high if you think of all the stored-up presents, the good will, the exchange of kind words of praise and admiration and promises of life-long friendship.

Division of assets

Pausing in my review of notes for today’s Family Law class, I take a quick look at CNN.com (to make sure the world hasn’t yet destroyed itself; as Friedman of the NYT wrote yesterday, one has such low expectations of news stories these days), where I find an article about another couple’s relationship woes (story here).

Demba and Chaka (Demba’s the female) seem not in the mood for procreation. After five years of inhabiting the same space, they seem hardly to have glanced at each other and Philadelphia zookeepers now believe that they may have never even had a sexual encounter (this in spite of the fact that Chaka is one fertile guy, having fathered many babies in his previous surroundings).

She gets to keep the house (she’ll stay in their ‘home’), but he gets to move in (at another zoo) with a couple of promising females. Her biological clock has ticked away, while he can just keep going and going. Have we really evolved from ape-dom all that much?

[CNN photo is of Chaka--beloved by females, though not by Demba. I'm with Demba on this one]

Star gazing

A friend-reader reminded me that I should be looking at the sky at dusk because it will be many decades before I will be able to see again the line up of five planets without the aid of a telescope. I have only until the end of the month to do this.

Wanting to spread the wealth, let me post the map of planets so that you, too, can tell your children and grandchildren that you were fortunate enough to have read a webblog in 2004 that showed you what to look for: